Idle thoughts on cinema in 500 words (give or take a few). by Ian Scott Todd

12.28.2013

The Films of 2013: Her

Her, the new film written and directed by Spike Jonze,
is a post-modern love story founded on an intriguing “what if” conceit.Where 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind—written by Jonze’s
sometime collaborator Charlie Kaufman—wondered about the implications of
erasing one’s memories in order to cope with the pain of loss, Her imagines the possibility of romance between humans
and operating systems sentient enough to experience feelings of love and sexual
desire.Joaquin Phoenix and
Scarlett Johansson play the film’s unlikely couple, both adrift in a subtly
futuristic vision of Los Angeles.Phoenix’s Theodore is a mopey, socially awkward writer who works for a
service that drafts and sends personalized “hand-written” letters to customers’
loved ones.Johansson’s Samantha
is his “OS,” a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence program tasked
primarily with organizing his hard drive and alerting him to important e-mail—a
kind of virtual secretary.But as
Theodore begins to rely on Samantha for more personal tasks (she counsels him
about dating, friends, and a pending divorce), and as she finds herself
grappling with the limitations of her consciousness (she’s capable of human
thought and emotion, but, lacking a body, is unable to experience physical
sensation), their bond becomes curiously intimate.

The film’s premise will no
doubt strike some viewers as gimmicky, and others may find themselves allergic
to its more cloying moments, as when a besotted Theodore plinks out a love
ballad for Samantha on his ukulele.But such scenes are outnumbered by others in which the film’s tone is
weirder, funnier, and more profoundly sad.Her succeeds
in bringing together a number of disparate film genres: like Eternal
Sunshine, it takes a sci-fi
premise and maps it onto a romantic comedy that morphs into an existential
drama.To its credit, it raises
more questions about human nature, technology, love, and relationships than it’s
able to answer, so that even after its plot comes to a resolution of sorts it
still feels enigmatic.It’s a rare
example of a film that ends by opening out instead of shutting down; it knows
that it’s dealing with ideas that are too big to finish off.Jonze (and Kaufman) are frequently
drawn to messy emotional states, particularly the messiness of love and
romance, and that messiness is rendered beautifully here.In spite of their sometimes glaring
flaws, their films are commendable for retaining the kinds of jagged edges that
less ambitious filmmakers often try to sand down.

That edginess is embodied
quite literally by Phoenix, who effectively carries the movie(he’s on-screen almost continuously);
his plaintive, searching eyes suggest a man barely holding back vast reserves
of emotional pain.He’s gained
back much of the weight he lost last year for his role in The Master, but his performance here is similarly raw, cagey,
visceral.He’s nicely supported by
Johansson, who does first-rate voice work as Samantha, her initially bright,
flirty inflection gradually deepening and darkening as she awakens to the
complexities of human relationships, and by Amy Adams as Theodore’s long-time
confidante, who undergoes an identity crisis of her own.Even as its plot arranges these
characters into various couplings, Her uses them to suggest that our journey to understand
ourselves is as mysterious and complex as any relationship we will have with
one another.